Odd Favicon appearing in Google Apps

September 17, 2013 | 3 comments

Something odd has happened to my Google Apps favicon. It is no longer the familiar Gmail envelope but some gear and spanner (wrench) combination. The image above shows the new and old icons and you can see the new icon better below.

This has only appeared in the last week and only seems to affect Google Apps mail and not Gmail itself, as you can see from above.

A quick search online shows that others are seeing this too with all sorts of speculation as to what it could be. Myself I think it is simply a mistake – what … Read the rest

Solving Bad Request Errors on Google’s Gmail

July 3, 2013 | 4 comments

If, like me, you have been seeing a lot of “Bad Request Error 400” messages or perhaps the yellow bad to the top of Gmail saying “Oops… the system encountered a problem (#400) – Retrying in” then, like me, you will be similarly frustrated.

This only seems to have been an issue in the last few months and I am not sure whether it is just an issue with Chrome but whatever it is a really time sapping problem.

The details that I outline below aren’t a permanent solution, I suspect that is only in the gift of Google but … Read the rest

A Google Sized Problem

August 6, 2012 | Comment

As of June 2012 Gmail has 425 million active users. That’s seven times the population of the UK and one and a half times the population of the US, so it’s a pretty sizeable number of people. I am an active user, the rest of my household are users, as is my mother-in-law. This gives a good idea of the cross section of people using Gmail: young, old, male, female, tech-savvy and not so.

About a month ago my mother-in-law’s Gmail account was hacked but not only was the password changed but also all the reset data. This is … Read the rest

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

April 16, 2010 | Comment

Google has release a number of interesting and useful updates over the last few days and removed (or planned to) remove a big one.

Firstly the good stuff. Gmail now allows you to drag and drop files to be attached – a real time saver. You simply drag the file over the attachment area and drop – job done. It works well on both Windows and Mac with Chrome. The second change in Gmail is the ability to add a calendar invitation into an email. Again a great improvement.

The other major changes have come in Google Docs where a … Read the rest